


Silence

by DeikaKanna



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Death, Feels, M/M, Tony Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 15:36:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2433977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeikaKanna/pseuds/DeikaKanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The suit's HUD flashed alarmingly in front of his eyes, listing immediate dangers and points of damage. Tony ignored that, too. It was irrelevant. His entire being had narrowed down to a single desperate need - find Loki. Anything else came in second, including his own safety. If he failed in this, his own sorry life would quickly cease to have meaning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

**Author's Note:**

> I should be working on Tarnished Silver. But a whole bunch of song lyric related feels ambushed me and this happened instead. It's not my fault!

Fire rained from the heavens. The wind was like a furnace, howling with fury, churning with smoke and embers. Tony staggered as debris from a nearby explosion stuck him hard from behind. He steadied himself with a desperate curse, ignoring both his own instincts and JARVIS's insistent voice telling him to _flee_. He couldn't run. Not yet. Not until he found Loki.

The suit's HUD flashed alarmingly in front of his eyes, listing immediate dangers and points of damage. Tony ignored that, too. It was irrelevant. His entire being had narrowed down to a single desperate need - find Loki. Anything else came in second, including his own safety. If he failed in this, his own sorry life would quickly cease to have meaning.

The Avengers were dead. Of all Earth's mightiest heroes, only Iron Man remained standing. That knowledge made him numb in all the places where it should have hurt the most. His heart was a cold lump inside his chest. His mind was stripped of debilitating emotions like grief or anger or fear. Those would come later, and with them, perhaps the need to avenge what had been lost. Right now, there was no room for emotion. It would only cripple him and he needed his mind clear.

"Loki? Can you hear me?"

He'd tried several times already to rouse the god on the communicator, and each time silence was his only reply. Not even the empty crackle of static. Just silence.

Fire swirled. Tony raised an armoured arm to shield his face, staggering again as a column of flame rolled over him. For a moment he was buffeted on all sides by screaming winds and he felt the inside of the suit heating up to extremely unsafe levels. The words _cooked alive_ teased at his thoughts and the HUD seemed intent on giving him a seizure. Tony shut it off. Now all he could hear was the roaring of the wind and flame, alone in his own private piece of hell on earth.

He took a step and winced as something popped in the left leg of the suit. Gears crunched and grinded. With teeth tightly clenched, he took another experimental step, and found he could still move. The leg dragged a little, forcing him to walk with a limp, but it still functioned.

"Loki!"

His voice disintegrated in the inferno, torn to shreds and eaten alive by raging flame.

" _LOKI!!_ "

It was becoming difficult to breathe. The suit's filter was struggling to keep his air supply free of smoke. Tony coughed, feeling his lungs constrict. He staggered forward and something high above caught his eye. A brightness that wasn't part of the firestorm. He gazed up at it, mesmerised like a moth by the flame, watching as it grew larger and brighter. Was this the end? The fabled light at the end of the tunnel? No, it couldn't be, he still had to ...

Tony wrenched his eyes away from the light, just in time to see a shape materialise from the heart of the flames. A shape that staggered towards him, charred and blackened but limned in green light. A shape Tony knew by sight and touch, perhaps better than he knew himself. Green eyes blazed in a pain distorted face and Loki shouted something, his words ripped away before they could reach Tony's ears.

Overhead the light pulsed and grew murky around the edges with deep purple tendrils like creeping veins. They pulsed in time with the light, and it was only when Tony felt the impact of Loki's hand hitting his arm that he realised he'd been standing there staring, probably for some time. He looked at Loki, and it hurt him in ways he hadn't known were possible to see that regal, arrogant, beautiful face transformed into something feral and pained and desperate. His right arm hung limp by his side and his left hand was blistered from touching the overheated metal of Tony's suit. Blood coated half his face like a mask and his eyes burned with a terrible resignation. The eyes were the worst part. Loki didn't give up. Tony would have been willing to bet he didn't know the meaning of the concept, yet here he was, corpse pale beneath the ash and blood, and his eyes said he knew this was the end.

Tony wasn't ready to accept that. He grabbed Loki's uninjured arm and began to pull him along. Where he thought he was going, Tony had no idea. Safety, but where was safe in a world gone to hell? He glanced up, and saw that the light had constricted to a single point, no larger than a star in the night sky. When he lowered his eyes again, Loki was staring at him. Bloodless lips moved but Tony couldn't make out the words.

The world went silent. Tony could hear nothing but the frantic beating of his own heart, then the shockwave hit and sent him flying. He hit the ground hard, hard enough to force all the air out of his lungs and leave him reeling. The suit wouldn't respond to his commands. He lay there dazed, unable to move, unable to do anything to prevent Loki from throwing himself on top of him, using his own body to shield him from the light that plummeted from the sky like the world's biggest baddest laser.

It struck. The world turned red, then white, then black. Silence reigned. Solitude held him close. Tony knew no more.

 

~


End file.
